The Young One
by AnnaStarMoon
Summary: Rosemary is fifteen, American, and nothing interesting ever happens to her. She lives in a silent little neighborhood in a silent little town. She has no friends and very little family. She hasn't even been allowed to get her learner's permit yet. Then one day, the Doctor comes to town, and nothing is the same again. Yes, she's young, but she can adventure with the best of them.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

It was quiet.

Of course, it was always quiet. There wasn't much around to make noise near the house at four in the afternoon; not for all the ten years Rosemary had lived there. Still, it had started bothering her recently. There was a new four-in-the-afternoon silence that had set in, and it seemed to permeate the entire house. It was so deafening that Rosemary couldn't even bring herself to pick up a pencil and start on homework, though she knew it would break the silence somewhat. It was certainly a silence that deserved to be broken, shattered into a million pieces. Funny how silence falling and silence breaking meant completely opposite things, though one naturally followed the other.

And then it broke. The silence fell away and Rosemary came out of the stupor that the silence always sent her into. Though what had saved her, she wasn't quite sure. The sound was completely alien to her; a sort of creaking and whooshing, sounding so far off that she wasn't clear on how it had even reached her. She supposed it didn't have much to compete with. In any case, she was grateful. Far from encouraging her to go back to her work, however, the sound made her curious. Rosemary was familiar with all the sounds of the neighborhood; cars, lawn mowers, birds, and wind rustling leaves mostly covered it. This sound was foreign and, unfortunately, the most interesting thing to come to Rosemary's neighborhood all week.

Leaving a note that said only _Going for a bike ride, be back soon. - Rose_ on the front door, Rosemary set out on her bike. She had no particular destination, and didn't hold out much hope for finding the source of the sound, but was willing to find any excuse to leave the house. She passed a few neighbors out working in their lawns, but honestly, no one of note lived on the street.

Rosemary was finally beginning to enjoy the breeze and whir of the ride when she saw an unfamiliar pedestrian ahead of her. He was walking, somewhat bow-legged, on the edge of the gutter, looking around himself with unabashed curiosity. Rosemary rang her bell and muttered something like, "'Scuse me," as she went around him, but stopped abruptly when she heard the man's voice.

"Sorry. Oh, actually, do you think you could tell me something?" It wasn't the words that stopped her. It was his English accent. Rosemary couldn't distinctly remember a time when she had heard and English accent in real life, but she was certain it had never come out of the blue like this.

She immediately turned the handlebars of the bike around to face him, hoping she didn't sound overeager in her response. "Sure, what?" _So American. Why do I have to say _sure_ like such an American?_

"What's the deal with this place? Anything unusual happen here, anything at all? Because it seems to me that something is definitely off about it." _Oh God._ His face was handsome, and even more English than his voice. People didn't have that kind of face in America, did they? He was young, too, not and old man as she had at first suspected. And besides, he was wearing a bow tie, suspenders, and high-water pants. _WHO ARE YOU?_ Rosemary's brain screamed.

"Um. _You're_ unusual, but other than that… no. Nothing unusual. We're actually aggressively usual here." There. That sounded all right. The man seemed to think so, too, because his young face smiled with old eyes.

"Always the ordinary places where the strange stuff happens, isn't it?" He said to no one in particular. "Can't I get an easy one?"

"An easy what?"

"Oh, you know," He said vaguely, turning to go.

"Where are you going?"

"Thought I'd have a bit of a look around, see if anything pops out at me." He turned a corner, aimlessly, and muttered to himself, "Definitely off. Too… something."

As he walked away, Rosemary felt a wave of panic. If she let him out of her sight, she might never see him again, and she didn't think she could stand that. She had a strange idea that if she let him go, she would miss something wonderful. _Just speak. Say something, anything!_

"I can show you around if you want," Rosemary called out, much to her own relief. The man turned. "I've lived here since I was five, so I know how to get anywhere."

"All right then, come along. I'm the Doctor, by the way."

Rosemary waited a few seconds, waiting for the obvious second part to the sentence. It didn't come. "I feel like you want me to ask what your name is."

"I would like that." He laughed, smiling with those eyes that were much too old for the rest of the face.

"Okay, Doctor Who?"

"Just 'the Doctor'." He looked almost gleeful when he said it.

"Oh, come on, that's not fair. If you're going to make me ask, at least deliver with a good name. Like, my dad once knew a doctor whose last name was Sterns, but then she got married and now her last name is Lively!"

"That is wonderful! I'm quite sorry I don't have anything like that to tell you, but I just go by 'the Doctor'."

"I like it. It's very efficient. I'm Rosemary, by the way, but you can call me Rose."

A brief spasm of something like pain crossed his face, but he quickly regained himself. "I'll stick with Rosemary, I think. Or maybe Mary. Has anyone ever called you Mary?"

"No," Laughed Rosemary, "But it's fine."

"Wonderful. Come along then, Mary," Said the Doctor, breaking into a skip. Mary followed on her bike. "Let's go exploring!"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The streets of Mary's neighborhood proved to be every bit as dull as she had suspected. It wasn't a particularly boring neighborhood in itself; it was semi-wooded and there were plenty of hills, and the houses were all sufficiently different, but it was on the whole a lackluster place. In the end, after much zigzagging and weaving through the streets, Mary steered them towards the main part of town, which lay about half a mile from her house.

"If you don't mind me asking, what exactly are we looking for?"

"I don't tend to use the word 'exactly' when describing the things that I look for," The Doctor replied, while waving at a small dog that chased them from the other side of a white fence. "Especially in cases like these. One just has to wait for the adventure to find them."

"Well, good luck. Adventure has yet to find me." Sighed Mary, though she strongly suspected, with growing excitement, that this wasn't true anymore.

"Ah! I see an ice-cream shop ahead!" Cried the Doctor. "We've got to go in. I can't simply pass up an ice-cream shop, can you?"

"It's a Dairy Queen." This was, to Mary, sufficient response. The Doctor, however, remained blank. "It's weird that something so universal in America doesn't mean anything to you. Goes to show, that just because you all speak English in Britain doesn't mean you're the same. You know—"

"I'm not English," Said the Doctor, and opened the door before Mary could question him further.

"Hello, Dairy Queen," He used an odd inflection. It would have made Mary look up if she had been working there, but this was clearly not everyone's response. The cashier was actually reading a magazine at the counter, and no sounds issued from the kitchen.

"Hello!" Mary waved her hands. The cashier looked up briefly, but still didn't respond.

"Oh, no," The Doctor said quietly from the doorway.

"It's fine, people just aren't very into service around here," Mary explained. She walked past the Doctor and up to the counter. "I'd like—"

She was again cut off, but this time it wasn't the Doctor's voice. A very disruptive sound—a cross between warbling buzzing—was issuing from a small stick which the Doctor held. It had a green light on the end, but that quickly faded, along with the sound. Mary found herself, for the first time, slightly annoyed with the Doctor, but that stopped right away when she saw the look of dread on his face.

"Come with me, Mary," He said in a trembling voice. "NOW." Together they fled the Dairy Queen, and proceeded to run down the street; poking a head inside each shop, and waving the device around. It would always start out buzzing, but it only took a few seconds to die. As they went, the Doctor muttered in increasing tones of terror. "Oh no, oh no, why this? Goes to show you—America. _Why?_ No-good thing, why won't you work? I didn't mean it, I'm sorry, please don't die on me…" And so on. At the end of the block he whirled around, nearly causing Mary to run into him.

"I'll need your bike. I can have it back to this afternoon, just meet me—"

"No!" Cried Mary, panicked. Then she stopped and collected herself. "I mean, you can't take my bike. I need it to get back home. Can I come wherever you're going?"

"I really don't think that's a good use of our time. Yours especially. You might get distracted, and people who get distracted around me tend to get hurt." The Doctor spoke very fast, but with a frightened sincerity that almost made her back away. Almost.

"Please. I need to be distracted. I won't get hurt, I promise, just don't leave me."

He considered her for a moment, and then shook his head as if to say, _I don't have time for this._ "All right then, onto the handlebars."

"What? I'm not going to ride the handlebars of my own bike."

"So then, you'll have _me_ ride on the handlebars? Actually, that would be fun… but you don't know where we're going. Handlebars. Now."

As they awkwardly climbed onto the bike, Mary could hardly believe her luck. Yesterday she would never, ever, have believed that she would soon ride on the handlebars of a bike driven by an odd, handsome Englishman—or not?—as they went on adventures.

She was jarred from her reverie somewhat when they started moving, and she realized that she was in danger of flying off the fast-moving bike.

"Where's a motorcycle when you need one?" The Doctor muttered. Mary couldn't say she agreed. They sped back the way they had come, past Mary's house, and eventually to the dirt path which led into the woods. Here they stopped. "We'll have to go on foot. Geronimo!"

Mary followed as best she could, but there were plenty of branches on the rough path, and the Doctor was really very fast. Just when she was about to call out for him to slow down, or let her rest, they came to a clearing and stopped. It took a moment for Mary to register that something was off about the clearing, and what was off was that there was a large blue telephone box in it; a box that certainly had not been there when Mary was younger and had played in the woods.

"Aaaaand yes, this is it, and can we get along with minimal explanation for now?" He swung the door open and looked to Mary. "You might see that it's—"

"Bigger on the inside…"

"Excellent. In, in, we have things to do!"


End file.
